Complete Guide On How To Write Serials | And Then Some

Why hello there, dear writers!

Do not be alarmed but our world is coming to an end. Countries are collapsing, oil is kicking the can, and eggs are harder to find now than during Easter time. But fear not, because you’re a writer, so you don’t need to rely on something silly like a wage when you have your assets under you that are selling.

They ARE selling, right?
 

Oh they’re not. And that’s why you’re here? Well… that sucks.

But fear not, for I will shed some light on these dark and trying times. Europeans prepare to be jealous. There is a new flavor of writing in town, and it’s been this way for quite some time. It’s called the serial and it’s been around for ages, just not as wide spread due to how things were produced and found. What is a serial and how do you write them?

Well, to answer that question, we will sadly need to go through a bit of a history lesson, as usual, so feel free to skip that part if you’re already familiar with it.

Part 1 The History of Serials

Media was always a fickle thing in the past. We’d make one single work and even that gets ruined over time as pages fall and paint fades. People didn’t expect much to last long, so things were made over a long period of time, painstakingly, and we would engage in retellings. The same story, but told over and over again in different ways, usually featuring the same hero or same plot, but with a different flavor. Whether it’s intentional or accidental, there is a form of retelling constantly in media, and this became even more present once we entered the industrial age with things like printers and film.

No longer were we limited to hand written text or telling people our ideas. Now we had our art do the work for us. England, in the 1800s, was one of the first to catch on to this new way of writing, and we were given the penny dreadful. Pay a penny and you’ll get a short 8-16 page story about something exploitative and sensational. Detectives finding out a murder, swashbucklers slapping each other with swords, kooky vampires biting people, the works. People would read these because they caught their eye and stimulated something primal, rather than cause desire for something deep or thought provoking. In fact, you had to turn your brain off in order to read these and they were written in a simple way to include the low educated.

Big words were a big no-no because the big brain people like us were far and few between. Plus this was way before the government started to trick people into getting useless student loans.

After the gay 90s, we started to play with films that didn’t have any sound. These films were becoming so cheap to produce and so easy to write, using this penny dreadful style, that you didn’t even really need a writer half the time. Just make a movie about a girl being tied to the railroad tracks by a villain wearing a cape and a top hat and you’re set. Nearly every movie was about 15min long anyway back then, because that’s how long one reel was, so there wasn’t much to do for story. You had to establish everything in the first minute or so in order to have enough time for the middle and then the quick kiss at the end.
 

This silent film style of movies with their penny dreadful upbringing was then used as an inspiration for a new type of story. The pulp magazine became huge due to more people knowing how to read basic words and thanks to the lack of money during the Great Depression. Now, legally, I can’t say we’re entering any kind of recession or depression, because the US government forbids such fear mongering, and the data is sexist and racist, so I will simply say that during this GREAT DEPRESSION we had a lot of SERIAL WRITERS making MONEY because it was a GOOD TIME TO WRITE THEM.
 

And why not? They were cheap, made on pulp paper. They were easy to read, made for the average factory worker, which are now called starbucks baristas. They were short, easy to fit in a magazine but also kept on continuing as issues went by. They were simple, with again, consisting of exploitative and sensational subjects like detectives, supernatural monsters, swashbucklers; but now also including space adventurers, barbarians, cowboys, and the pulp vigilante.

Crime was rampant during the 1930s and people need a hero. These heroes usually wore a domino mask and these heroes also sparked something else that was called the radio serial, which was a radio show that would continue every week, with a quick introduction recap for anyone who missed the previous show. On top of this, because of the demand for listeners, these shows would implement the cliff hanger, named because they would have people hanging off of a cliff to make the audience wonder how they will get out of that mess(usually followed by a deus ex machina).

Cliffhangers were popular before the radio serial, usually in films featured in a nickelodeon. And yes, you read that right, they were called nickelodeons. They were a tiny movie shower before theaters that people would pay a nickel for, hence the name nickel-odeon. So far we’ve been talking about nickels, pennies, things of tiny amounts of money that anyone could afford since phone calls back then were a dime. There were also dime novels, which were quickly written in the same manner as the pulp magazines and the penny dreadfuls, just longer and more fluffed out. Later on, the equivalent of the dime novel was the pulp magazine, which cost a dime.

Pretty much everything cost a dime back then, which is rather shocking considering even the cheapest novels now cost 10 bucks when it’s a physical copy. 100x more expensive over the course of 100 years. What a time to be alive…
 

After WW2, stories about war were aplenty, as well as cowboys for whatever reason. On top of that, movie serials were dying off thanks to a brand new invention that was slowly pushed into every household: The Television set. Just slap on those rabbit ears and you’re set for hours upon hours of television serials until midnight, because that was the time TV stopped broadcasting until only recently. Can you imagine, we’ve only had witching hour programming for not even 30 years now. But before the sign-on sign-off system with TVs ended, we had a bit of a problem with serials.

We couldn’t record things, so the serial was unable to continue the story from the beginning to the ending of the series in a coherent way for most viewers. Instead, we had to get a stand alone story with every episode, and these stories had to fit a 30min time slot. So as we transferred from pulp magazines to tv serials, we didn’t really remove the demand for what was essentially short stories featuring the same characters.

Cartoons like Scooby-doo did this incredibly well as a mystery story that would wrap up the mystery by the time the show is over, with the unmasking. Even cartoons up into the 80s, like GI Joe and He-Man had to make stand alone stories that would be two sides duking it out every episode, with the bad guys always losing. No story arcs, no several episode stories, nothing past the 30min mark, which was more like a 23min mark thanks to commercials.
 

These episodic shows were a swift but necessary change to the serial format, due to television airing each episode once and then not really having any open slots for reruns. These were the Triassic years of television, where we had as many channels as the knob on the set had numbers. We didn’t even have remote controls. Some of us only had one that was connected with a wire. The hell is that even for? So I can strangle myself with it after I realize there’s nothing on?

Despite these pitfalls, these things got big, and I mean really big. Sitcoms overwhelmed serials by just being an episodic form that lets people sit down and enjoy a family being goofy for an episode. The sitcom was so mundane and repetitive that they were able to take place in a single living room for the entire episode. It wasn’t really until the 90s that we were able to get some breathing room with cartoon sitcoms that mixed the Hanna-Barbera ease of producing cartoons with the sitcom fashion where it is about a family. You know, stuff like Simpsons and Rugrats.
 

90s kids remember…

Thanks to the TV, our serials went from fantastic adventures across creative landscapes to being stuck in a living room with your family while watching a family who’s stuck in their living room. Wrap your brain around that one. One of the biggest sitcoms out there called Cheers took place almost entirely in a bar. It’s like the silent film era where everything is trapped on a single shot set never left and it was just given sound and a laugh track. There used to be a novelty of going to a shooting and watching as part of the audience, but as recording things became easier, a live studio audience became a thing of the past.
 

The sitcom was designed to be simple, cozy, topical, and something to be there as a time waster. Honestly, no different than a game show or talk shows, which is why we know these things as daytime television.

There was another kind of serial that few want to mention that was a big influence on internet era serial writing, and that is the telenovela. Now, I know this is like a spanish word and people always associate it with organ music and twists involving a twin brother or someone thought to be missing but it was just because the actor was on vacation, and this is very true. The telenovela, or soap opera(properly named because it was directed towards women and there were always soap commercials), is a massive influence because… it’s directed towards women.
 

Starting as radio serials, the telenovela became "tele" once these female oriented shows came to the TV and grew into a global phenomenon. That right there tells you that they did something right, even if the organ music is goofy and it gets parodied by pretty much every kid show. Speaking of, most kid shows are serials, other than things like game shows and skit shows.
 

Before we move on, we need to also address one of the most important factors in serial writing next to the telenovela: the comic book.
 

Comics started as comedic stories that were strips. Very short, quick puns or jokes, not much to shake a stick at. That changed when the pulp era magazines decided to also become mixed with comic strips. DC, Marvel, these guys become as big as they are because they were some of the first and realized that superheroes were something that vigilante justice could use to fight crime in a super human way. Whether they had super speed, super strength, or super money, these heroes took over the comic book industry to the point where when we think of a comic, we think of a man in tights punching someone dressed like the Brickster.

Yes, there are different kinds of comics, some also involve horror shorts like Tales From the Crypt, but we can't simply ignore the fact that super heroes became big AFTER they were put in comic form and AFTER we decided they have super powers. Remember, DC doesn't mean the District of Columbia. I know, I checked. It means detective comics, because the go-to story prior to super heroes was the detective and vigilante story.

Once we hit the 70s, a new type of drawn media started to take a global hold, all the way from the little nuked island of Japan. Manga had the same upbringing as comics, both starting as 1800s strips that were tiny and growing into magazines, but the main difference was introduced globally with story arcs that spanned a year, if not multiple years.
 

Story arcs consist of a chain of installments where a particular story plot is produced in the same way as a telenovela would produce their story arcs.
 

This "chain of stuff happening in synchronicity" would cause changes to the characters with character arcs. Comics tend to have everything reset once an issue is done because another writer was expected to take after and write another installment in the form of a short story. The sitcom and episodic style of show was the same way, the world resets itself after the episode is over and we begin anew, all due to new writers having to take over AND the fact that audience introduction is harder in the middle of a story. 
 

The manga would retain the same writer or writers, with the intention being where people would get a longer story but monthly, also similar to how earlier books were made in beats like A Tale of Two Cities and Alice in Wonderland. Not only that, but the book Hero of a Thousand Faces hammered in the concept that a common mythological occurrence is the change of a hero with each journey and the help of a mentor with training to take on this newfound challenge. This introduction in the 50s, with the ease of collecting, and the globalization of media now that planes existed, all allowed manga to turn into what we know now when it comes to most shonen.
 

Girls were watching telenovelas, guys were reading comics, and now guys were able to experience a mass amount of media that mixed both positives: the overarching story and the concept of a hero's journey. This then expanded with the production of home media like VHS and TV recorders, which are the only reason we have any overarching story shows at all. Before they were invented, every single TV studio would reject anything overarching because it required people to watch every episode prior in order to understand what's going on.
 

The ability to record and buy home media allowed studios to sell seasons of shows, which then allowed shows to create seasonal arcs. Each season was meant to be a year's worth of production, with an episode being shown every week, with 12 episodes making up 12 weeks, which ended up being about 3 months. They were shown for a season, hence the name season. Either that or it was because they really spiced up our lives.

Thanks to these seasonal arcs, anime was able to change from self contained episodic adventures into vast storylines that would sometimes even last more than a season. Shows like The X-Files demanded the viewer to have seen previous episodes to understand where the show is going, with a season finale usually having the seasonal plot get wrapped up and then have the next one introduced with a cliffhanger. Remember that term from the old radio serials?
 

Because of these overarching seasons, kid shows also changed with things like Power Rangers, in how the team and villains would change around each season thanks to the ability to make an ending episode and have a continuation of story. The TV serial was back and better than ever, all thanks to those beautiful black boxes of easily damaged film tape that squeaked for some reason. Now things were mixing between episodic and serial arcs, usually done with things like 3 parters for the ending of a season.
 

Most family sitcoms would have vague changes during the show, ranging from the kids growing up, having a new kid in the family, or changes to whoever decided to rip up their contract. While family shows didn't change much other than subject matters, both episodic and serial shows began performing what is known as the "A plot, B plot" style.
 

Because the show was meant to be 30 min long, and there wasn't the ability to make a long enough story every week, the goal was to have 2 incredibly short stories that involve 2 parties, in the same way cartoons would have two shorts per episode, but these plots would be tied together into one thing.

I know this is hard to believe, but show writers had trouble making a story last 23min, and instead needed to have two 10min stories. The episodic story became shorter as time went on, to the point where shows like Family Guy are infamous for implanting elongated gags that go nowhere, just to fill up screen time.
 

But when it comes to our current millennia, what we really need to talk about is anime, due to how it took over how serials are seen online.

Since the 80s, anime shows were rather female focused with works like Sailor Moon and Imyunasha, while the male focused stuff was all about fighting and giant robots. Female focused shows, called shojo, were able to be skipped around and started anywhere due to their soap opera background. Most episodes were treated as part of the plot, because the plot was so simple and didn’t really have an ending or goal outside of whatever the main character wanted to do. Meanwhile, male focused shows, called shonen, were to be followed very closely and from the start, with a lot of what's now called "filler".
 

The point of filler is due to how manga works, where installments are needed every month and sometimes the story writer needs more time to plan out a big finale or progression. This is then "filled up" with a non sequitur of an episodic story moment, in order to buy time and save brain power for actual story beats. Filler tends to be a random fetch quest, something to train for, backstory of a side character, or just unapologetic fan service. My favorite is the fan service, because it knows what guys want to see. However, some people have a problem with filler and some shows tend to abuse the hell out of it, like One Piece, where the show’s been going on for over 1,000 episodes and only about 200 are part of the actual story.

Video games also sparked a lot of unintentional creativity, mostly from how video games were formatted since the 90s. When we were limited to the arcade, there wasn’t much time to dive into a story with all the other dopy kids waiting in line for their turn at Pac-Man. Video game stories took on a new leaf once home entertainment took off with home consoles, conjuring up story rich games like Final Fantasy and even Super Mario. And yes, you read that right… Super Mario is story rich.

Despite being simple platforming games about taking shrooms, the Super Mario games had enough depth to cause TV shows and even a movie to be based on the games, with the 90s movie using the term “based on” as an excuse to make a dinopunk movie that was Total Recall for kids. God I love the 90s…

Levels were used as backdrops for episodes and they were given cliche cartoon plots to present something in an episodic way. As technology advanced and arcades died off, games started to take on a more movie-like presentation, and movies started to take on a more video game presentation. This postmodernist blending of media caused more RPG-like games to include stories with their extra content called side quests, thus having games like Fallout include tiny episodes that are not related to the main game but are still playable within it. The goal was to add more story about the world that was built, so that you can give a reason why a cave is there or why the Dragonborn is taking 200 hours to get on with ending the game already. I didn’t want to name names, but The Elder Scrolls abused the hell out of this concept to the point where I could sometimes tell what movie or show they based their side quest on.
 

Right now, side quests in games are socially required to have a side story or else it will be viewed as lazy, even if the side story is a lazy excuse of filler in the form of easily skippable text. Try to wrap your head around that one.

So when exactly did internet serials get started?

The answer to that is: I don’t know. Some time between the invention of the internet and now. But what happened during this vague period is the vast expansion of fan fiction, which is what you’d expect. Fiction by a fan of an existing work, with serialized formatting being the norm due to how a chapter could be easily uploaded online and retain readership with these consistent uploads. And these weren’t even stories to be paid for, they were just something based on something else that already existed, like Harry Potter or Pokemon. People would just think “what would I do in this magical world?” and then write their cute little Mary Sue into Bikini Bottom.
 

The plan? There was no plan. The goal? I’m not sure if there was a goal. These were senseless stories written by anime addicted teens just trying to practice something and copy multiple things at once, throwing any kind of banana-filled turd at the wall and hoping it sticks. And when it sticks, you know the spaghetti is ready. The serial took off even higher by… going lower.

Seriously, the highest rated fanfiction serials are one that’s about My Little Pony mixed with Fallout and another that’s just a person writing about Smash Brothers, as if combining all the Nintendo worlds could have an actual story.

But this postmodernist manipulation of properties with pastiche allowed people to find a new interest, new ways to interact with fans, and new ways to make up different stories that would go on forever. Anime stories were long and melodramatic, teens like stuff long and melodramatic, anime retains a person’s attention over multiple episodes, it’s easy to digest, the entire thing is already made for you, all you have to do is make up your own plot and fill in your own archetypes. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that Naruto and Fairy Tail are the same thing, only one is about ninjas and the other is about mages. And those two copied from One Piece, which is about pirates.

Hey, it’s like not much has changed since the old pulp days, eh? Pirates, mages, ninjas. Exploitation is a major part of pulp and it's what postmodernist stories rely on these days to appear entertaining. You’re not going to get people to watch Naruto by removing the ninjas and making them normal school children. Yes, I know that tons of anime has a normal Japanese High School and they add whacky powers or something, but that is part of the exploitation and pastiche.
 

Melodrama from soap operas, exploitation from pulp, side quests from video games, and a seasonal cycle from the hero’s journey. These sound familiar, don’t they?

Now, we’re in the current day, where streaming is the norm and there’s little resistance to watching a serial. In fact, binge watching is so normalized that shows are released as a season, to be binge watched, and then is judged on how far people binge watched it.

The Steps

Assuming you skipped the history lesson, let’s define what a serial is.

A serial is a story that appears in a series of installments, meaning the story must both continue and must not be a single installment. Comic books can be considered serials, despite resetting themselves every episode in an episodic way, and are serials only during specific arcs. I know that this is all about how to write a serial, but the stand alone episodic type of series is also something worth talking about and suggesting due to how much dedication is required to become invested in a story. No matter how interesting your concept may be, the reader is always thinking about the time they will invest and the reason for even starting something. This is why people are more inclined to watch a random episode of the Simpsons instead of a random episode of Lost.
 

Oh wow, I totally aged myself with those references…
 

A serial is also a dedicated journey into a story that will consume a lot of time, for both the audience and the writer. Due to the length a serial would be once it takes off, studios have rarely tried to greenlight entire seasons(until recently) and started any show with a pilot. This pilot was for both proof of concept and to test an audience for what they like about it. As indie online writers, we don’t have to worry about dedicating too much time or money into a “pilot” but we are also at the mercy of reach with whatever platform we use. This is where extreme planning must be taken in order to refrain from wasting years of your life on an endless dud.
 

This planning may sound intimidating at first, but none of it involves the creative part. It's all about how you try to tackle your serial in the first place, with everything at a much deeper aspect that's almost always ignored. Remember, a serial is meant to be endless, so trying to plan an ending is the last thing you should be trying to do. Instad, you need to plan out the 5 p’s:
 

1. Process
2. Premise
3. Production
4. Possibilities
5. Purpose
    

These are the 5 incredibly simple steps that will make your serial sparkle like the diamond filled doo-doo butter it is. The main thing to keep in mind across your writer’s journey is profit. This is a controversial aspect of serials, especially in circles where Marxists cry big baby tears, but their entire inception was caused by capitalism and making money. Not only about money, the profit is about the expansion of ideas. Never limit yourself to one thing, even when you’re doing one thing at a time. So, with that in mind, let’s get to the first p.

Part 2 Process
 

Before trying to determine what you’ll write in the first place, you must first decide how you’re going to even approach it. When we used to hunt and gather, we had to establish our tools. You can't pick berries with a spear and you can't kill a deer by searching bushes. I'm sure someone wisenheimer will say how you can, but miss the point about efficiency. These are the people who should start the website missedthepoint.com and capitalize on that mess of the mind.

A type of serial is the matter of order and chaos, overarching vs separate. Order links all of the episodes together from the beginning to the end, while chaos allows these episodes to stand on their own and go wild. The kind of serial you will make will be a mixture of these two elements, as a spectrum, but with 4 types of stages:
 

1. Strictly story focused with no filler
2. Mostly story focused with little filler
3. Mostly filler with little story
4. Episodic with a hard reset each episode

Now, this might lose some of you, but I will give these types names after the 4 elements. The more order one has, the closer it is to sulfur, meaning the closer it is to fire. I know that fire sounds like it should be chaos, but trust me, in alchemy it is attached to masculinity and order, due to the relation to sun and enlightenment. Meanwhile, earth is attached to chaos and salt, due to the darkness of something like a cave. Mercury, the transmogrifying prima materia that stands between salt and sulfur, splits apart to make water and air with the other two prima materia.
 

This means, in the same formation as before, we would have:
 

1. Fire
2. Air
3. Water
4. Earth

An easy way to remember this kind of system is that when we stand on the surface of Earth, the earth is below us, as the ground, and the sun is above us as the light. Also, sitcoms are episodic, meaning earth types, which is another way of saying “grounded” or “down to earth” with how sitcoms try to relate to the average person as comfort media. Then at the other extreme, the most overarching serials are considered “hot topics” and “straight up fire”, like how something is trending or very impressive. Air elements are always “on the air”, because of how long they go on for, while still being popular. Then, of course, water can be considered “watered down” with how much filler gets in the way or something like a “tear jerker” because these are like soap operas that make us get emotional.

The first part of your process is to determine how much “filler” you will have in your story. The more filler, the longer it can go, but then the less “story” you are able to give the audience overall. At that point, the filler should be all about entertainment and pleasing the audience as entertainment, instead of tickling their brain and making them think. The point of a serial is to not have to think as the audience, because the series of events has your entertainment as the top priority. This is due to the fact that a serial is designed to have the audience come back again and again, with the promise to get more out of it.
 

Fire serials are for a quick but powerful ride through a world, with everything being part of the main plot. I would even be bold enough to say that they are relatable to something like a trilogy, because of how they share similar lengths and styles. These are the closest things to a novel or short story that you can get while being a serial, and they are some of the most well loved. In fact, these are some of the first serials with how they are the serial styles of Greek myths. Hercules had 12 labors, the Odyssey was a chain of adventures, Perseus had to fight a bunch of monsters, Jason and the Argonauts went to different places. Remove something from the fire serial and it is weaker because of it.

Air serials are helped by a tiny bit of filler, usually for play that allows the world to expand. This is the style most TV shows work with, because of the way a season works. Anime seasons are like this, monster of the week shows are like this, usually because it’s about a main bad guy having an army of sorts or a quest having a bunch of obstacles in the way. The trick is that these obstacles present themes and events that don’t impact the main plot but will still tie into it as a way to reinforce the message through repetition. This is a benefit for the story when there are long periods of wait time, so that we are reminded of what the entire thing is about.
 

Water serials can be considered the most watched and demanded though, due to how long one can last. They are not the most popular, but they can retain an audience for the longest time. General Hospital had 15,000 episodes and ran for about 60 years. Characters changed, storylines changed, tons of things changed, but the show was the show for that long. You’re not going to get a powerful story people can cling to across the entire thing, but you will get drowned in content with such a setting or character format.
 

Earth serials are the episodic ones that we are able to look at in the same way we look at comics or old sitcoms. Things can change, things can advance with time, but there’s a timelessness to it as things tend to reset at the end of every episode. Villains never really die, heroes never stop being heroes(for long), and the only thing connecting everything is a vague overarching theme that ties in with the title. These things can last the longest, but the dedication of the fanbase is going to be passive. We recognize these types of serials, it’s easy to make merchandise for them, but expect a lack of passion for the story.
 

Fire is story focused, while earth is more focused on the character’s interactions. We’re not watching Family Guy because the giant chicken plot changed our lives. We watch it because we want to see the characters goof around in comedic ways. We like water serials because they tie in loose plots from some kind of pool of characters for us to feel attached to. We like air serials because of the worldbuilding and depth it can reach.

We find a different form of entertainment from each of these, because we’re engaging with them for different reasons, ranging from story to worldbuilding to attachment to mundane interactions. The fire story is going to hit the big issues and quickly get people impressed by how focused it is, while the earth story is going to run forever and is geared at sustaining constant interest. Air and water are the middle ground that most people stay in, especially now with how media works, but these are also a bit more complex due to their combinations. Keep in mind that your serial element will also appeal to different kinds of people, because they require different amounts of brain power and focus. Fire requires more dedication, while earth is more about having a time waster.
 

Modernist attempts at entertainment were targeted at the working and poor as escapism. While the working class was sitting on a bus or train on their way to a factory, they were granted a slice of a more exciting life for that short period of sitting down and getting lost in their own head. The theme of a serial is less about message and more about meditation, which in this case the word meditation means “clearing out your head”. Sadly, this meditation was quickly turned into worship as fandoms became more fanatical through the use of fanfiction and people being clinically online. I don’t mean to start throwing shade half way through this, but the transformation from modernist to postmodernist quickly turned normal stories about space travel into down right religions.
 

I guess a trick of the trade for a good serial is to turn it into a cult, but you didn’t hear that from me.
 

Entertainment is caused by the factors of spectacle and interest. The more in line with themes and motifs this entertainment is, the better. Jokes, drama, fighting, flashy moves, exploration, magic, guns, explosions, these are all going to fit with the themes and motifs. Power Rangers wasn’t well loved for its teen drama, it became a staple for kids because of the entertaining way they fight monsters and symbolically transform into super heroes as normal humans. We don’t tune in to a soap opera for the humor, we get invested in the drama and twists, as well as the eye candy.

If anything, just look at what is selling and figure out what the key factor is that’s making it sell. Avoid the trap of trying to deconstruct what works, because you'd be trying to ensure your serial doesn't work if you remove the key selling point. More times than not, it’s going to be a mixture of exploitation, familiarity, and subject matter. The prima materia of entertainment. Hell, you can even explain the three with one sentence.

Entertainment value of Walking Dead? Archetypes of normal people killing zombies.
 

Entertainment value of Breaking Bad? Archetypes of normal people making drugs.
 

Entertainment value of X-Files? Archetypes of FBI people getting involved with paranormal cryptids.

Entertainment value of Game of Thrones? Archetypes of medieval people getting naked and killing each other.
 

This sounds like I’m oversimplifying serials that go on for multiple seasons, and you’re right. One of the best tools you can have in your arsenal is oversimplification and essentialism, in order to categorize your subjects into the proper slots and know what you’re doing. Thanks to postmodernism, essentialism is currently viewed as evil and a big no-no, yet the results of shows, games, and comics being successful presents us with the exact opposite. You don’t benefit from combating with what works. You benefit by researching what has worked in the past and then repeating these 5 star recipes. 
 

Formulaic is your friend when it comes to a serial, which is something people are frightened to see being put into words. 

“Really? Formulaic? But how can I experiment with the writing process?”

That’s the point: you don’t. Everything in your serial is meant to be a big homage to everything prior, as well as the addition of your own ideas. Your structure will be formulaic while the way you combine events and themes can be experimental. There is no shame in taking an existing premise or plotline from something you love, as long as you make it your own through your themes and approach. Every serial out there is a result of something that inspired it. Every serial is following a formula, with some following things down to a T.
 

Every show out there will have common episodes that fit particular tropes, like an episode where people switch bodies or the holiday special. Hell, even the game Resonance of Fate had a Christmas level within it where you had to throw Christmas presents at kids as a form of battle. That was taking a formula and giving a spin to it. Embrace the tropes to be entertaining, because these tropes are here to help you on your writing journey. Think of them as ghosts of the past who are there to aid you, instead of being afraid of them as if they are trying to harm you.

Entertainment is fine and dandy, but none of this means anything if you don’t have a premise.

Part 3 Premise

After you’ve determined your element, we now come to what it’s even about. The story within your serial matters, with the story based around characters. Your main characters are going to be the focus, because without them, you don’t have much of a cast. If your main characters keep on changing, you’re going to be working with something more like an anthology instead of a serial. However, it depends on who the characters actually are, since things like super heroes tend to separate the uniform from the person. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s get down to what the premise is all about.

The story is going to be about flow, rather than finalization. The dynamics rather than destination. The way your serial ends should be the last thing on your mind because the ending is not really a factor. Granted, give us a well earned farwell when it’s all over, but the resolution is going to be realized further down the road(or not at all). Thus, your premise is going to focus on a main goal.

However, you are still able to give yourself smaller checkpoints of accomplishment, either in the form of an episodic plot or an arc plot. The episodic plot will be incredibly small and take up an episode, while the arc plot will go across several episodes. Arcs are the key to making a more coherent serial, especially when you are dealing with seasons. These smaller plots are never to end the overarching goal that takes up the entire serial, because they are smaller in both time taken to accomplish and scale of importance. Think of these as stop signs and street corners on your way to a place that you’re trying to get to.
 

Your serial is going to be a journey, and the journey is about a cycle through the progression of a goal. If you are writing about a hero, you will have a hero’s journey. If you’re writing about an anti-hero, it’s an anti-hero’s journey. If it’s about a team, it will be about the team’s troubles across their journey. If it’s about the repetition of mundane events like chasing a mouse through a house and getting pounded into the ground by a dog, then the journey is actually about the writer and their progression in honing the voice that they will use for these repeated shenanigans.

This journey, this movement, all stems from that first foot forward and that single intention that you began with. This is why the premise is important and it’s important that you leave it open. The focus is continuation. You accomplish this continuation by providing goals for your protagonist to hold onto and tie these goals to the overall theme, as well as keep it within its genre.

Mystery stories are about solving mysteries. Crime stories are about solving crimes. Monster of the week stories are about fighting monsters every week. Fighting stories are about finding new things to fight. Romance stories are about finding new ways to have romance. Space Operas are about traveling to new planets or meeting new aliens.

Whatever your story is about, we can see that there is nothing there that consists of a final goal to end all goals. Even in a story where the villains try to take over a world, the hero will encounter a new villain who has that same goal of taking over the world. James Bond is a perfect example of this, as well as Indiana Jones. The person involved in a particular installment isn’t the real factor, because they are a single aspect of a larger theme, which in this case is “someone has the Rocky Mountain Oysters to try and take over the world here!”

But that’s only part of the premise. Continuing with the examples of things like James Bond and Indiana Jones, what else is so fascinating about them? Well, there’s the motif, which is a word that confuses a lot of us with how vague it is. Motif is a repetitive and distinct feature that’s in a work that helps develop the theme, tone, and even the genre. For example, if we examine James Bond for a bit, we can see that the movies are all about a secret agent MALE taking on a crazed scientific villain who tries to take the world hostage with some kind of doomsday device and utilizes the help of some kind of wacky henchman.
 

What did I hit, like 90% of the movies there? Which ones didn’t apply to that, the boring ones that nobody likes? That’s the reason why motifs are key. There is a consistency that retains viewership and keeps us coming back for more. We want to see something like Jaws, even though he’s just a tall guy with metal teeth. We want to see the ark get opened up and make Nazi heads explode, even when it looks like a deus ex machina.

This is going to be a bit nerdy, but there is scientific evidence that repetition is incredibly beneficial to a story, even though we are always told otherwise through misinformation. 
 

If we are familiar with something, we are having that subject strengthened through a stronger chemical interaction at the synapse of our neurons. That’s a smart person's way of saying “practice makes perfect”. Muscle memory, the chorus of a song getting stuck in our head, the opening song of a show, catchphrases, seeing the same outfit every day, drooling every time someone rings a bell, these are all forms of repetition causing our brains to react in some way. Serials rely on repetition because they are a repetition of the same theme, over and over again, but with different scenarios or slightly different events.
 

Aristotle has an amazing way of doing this kind of storytelling with arguments, which is why we named classical arguments after him. The point of a classical argument is to present an introduction that grabs the reader and makes them want to read further. Then the argument is made with a thesis that is attached to reasons that are relatable to the audience. The opposing arguments are presented afterwards, as many as possible and of equal or close to strength. Then the opposing arguments are addressed and defeated in ways that can still have some of them be valid, just not in the conversation being had. This kind of argument then concludes with an emotional appeal, call to action, or some kind of solution.

That’s pretty much every story out there.
 

Sure, I skipped all of the jargon about the classical argument like exordium, narratio, partition, confirmatio, refutatio, and peroration; but I avoided those Harry Potter sounding spells for a reason. That is not needed in order to understand that your story is an argument. Whether it’s something that is or should be, you’re still arguing for something with your story, arguing against the thing that causes the conflict, and making sure the reader can both relate to the argument and side with it enough to experience another one later. Ironically, some people will argue that stories are not really that, but more like windows into reality that we can manipulate here and there to make them more entertaining. The fact that it’s being declared as similar to reality or that something was manipulated to be more entertaining is literally the argument being made by whoever does that.
 

In a serial, we make this argument, over and over again, with different situations to see how strong the argument even is.
 

The motif is yet another journey, another continuation, across all the types of ways a story can repeat something. That repetition is what you want to hone in on, because that is the strength that binds everything in the serial together. Think of it as the chorus of a song. You can’t just repeat any old thing, it has to be part of the big picture. That big picture is the theme and this ties into the title.

Ever wondered why most song titles are also the main chorus line? Well, there you go, mystery solved. It’s the thing that’s repeated to be memorable to then be that reason you come back for more. This is a highlight, not a weakness. Removing that is like removing icing from a cake or fatalities from Mortal Kombat. 
 

You’d have to be insane or diabetic to do such a thing.
 

With this amorphous goal being important, what exactly is the goal of your character across the serial?

This is where planning comes in and the serial is summarized into existence with a cute little mad lib: Subject A(insert character name or group here) is trying to do objective A(insert their desire here) in order to (insert action here) subject B(insert conflict causing character, group, or event here). So far, with that simple sentence, we have determined several things. There is a protagonist who is trying to do something and there are obstacles in the way. These obstacles cause conflict, the conflict can be major or minor. Each conflict and mini plot will feature a theme of its own that is below, but still in line with the overarching serial theme.

How about some examples.

Naruto is a character who is trying to be the next hokage. His reasoning isn’t really that important to plan out at first, because this is his dream and his dream fills up the theme with symbolism. Hokage in his world is someone important, like a hero myth, and so Naruto is declaring that he is going to go on a hero’s journey. Thus, along his hero’s journey he gets trained by mentors, encounters trials, gets gifts from goddesses, and meets forms of his jungian shadow along the way. Any antagonist will fit a role as something that gets in the way of a hero, whether they are someone who tries to remove his heroic nature or someone who tries to stop him from reaching his goal.

But because this is a water show, there are tons of filler episodes across arcs that get in the way of this heroic journey. Whether you enjoyed it or hated it, the filler was in the way of the theme because it didn’t have much to do with the main heroic journey, unless it was someone else going through the same process, which is still filler because it’s not Naruto himself. One major issue that some people don’t realize is that the title is meant to be the biggest contributor to the theme, so if we have a show called Naruto, and Naruto is absent, then the theme is not being met at that moment, and that means it’s filler.
 

Recently, shows have been trying to combine filler episodes with plot points, sort of shoving the important stuff at the end in order to force people to watch the filler. I used Naruto as an example especially for this point, because Naruto was a massive show that became a household name, yet is guilty of these disgusting practices. Other shows like Supernatural will mix filler episodes with the main plot, using these main plot scenes as both reminders and recaps, and that's a little better. Especially when the filler episodes still contribute to the main story through theme, which makes it less like filler and more like an extension of the main quest. Again, it's fine to have filler, and fine to have extensions, but I find little reason to hide the main plot within pointless filler unless it's out of absolute greed and laziness.

Let’s reorganize. The premise is your story progression goals combined with your motifs. This is your yin and yang. What you say and how you say it. These two things, these two incredibly simple things, are exactly what kills a story when they are done wrong. Why is that you may ask? One word: production.

Part 4 Production

Let’s assume you understand how you want to create your serial and what it’s going to be about. A quick 12 episode story about, I don’t know, furry ninjas fighting giant robots. I tried to make something up on the spot and I accidentally made Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That or I’ve been reading too much Renegades. If anything, it's because of that stupid trailer that came out that shows how Seth Rogan needs to stop trying to be an animator and a comedian.
 

A good rule of thumb is that you should look at what Seth Rogan does and then do the exact opposite. But enough about woke nonsense, let's get back to being constructive and productive.

You’re done with the easy stuff, now you have to think about how it’s actually going to be made. These things have to not only be written out, but written out well. Filler is your friend only when it’s fun. Sadly, you also have to plan out how this filler will be made with the main story. People always ask me “how do I make my story get from point A to point B?” and that’s when I tell them “You do that by also getting it to point C”. But in a serial, that C loops the story back to point A.

I can feel a blank face through the screen, so here me out…

Imagine a straight line. Point A to point B. Now imagine a point being added in the middle, turning it from point A to point B to point C. Now imagine a loop going under the entire line from C, all the way back to A. Put two dots above that half circle and then put everything inside of a full circle. Congratulations, you just imagined a smiley face!
 

Okay, that was just some messing around, but it had a point. Your serial episodes have a beginning, middle, and end; with a season having a beginning, middle, and end; and the entire serial has a beginning, middle, and I guess an ending is inevitable. You cannot continue if you don’t return back to a new beginning to have a new middle and new end. Serials are stronger when they treat each episode as a self-contained substory, even when the goal is to have one main story that overarches as a series of events. These substories are what we call subplots.

A subplot is a plot that goes below the main plot. Main plot is accomplished when the entire serial is over, subplot is accomplished when the episode is over, and of course there is the mini-plot that goes below that as a scene or so. Understanding the point of each plot…erm point is imperative to understand the way you'll write it out. The mini-plot is below everything else, as a mini conflict, which carries the weight of every plot point above it in the way those slaves carried that oversized throne in 300. Get rid of one and it's not much of an issue, but get rid of enough and we have Xerxes standing on a motionless throne.

The throne is the subplot, symbolically deemed so by the fact that the throne was constructed by the command of Xerxes. but the throne is not alone in what makes a subplot, because anything commanded or created by Xerxes' command is another subplot, and this can go endlessly when able. If you can follow symbolism well enough, you can determine that Xerxes himself would symbolize the overall serial plot, which means this overall plot is there to control and command everything below it. Granted, comparing the plot structure of a serial to the villain in 300 is a bit silly, but you can imagine it with any other hierarchy because it is, in fact, a hierarchy. Yet another aspect of serial writing that offends the postmodernist: the story hierarchy exists and the mini-plot slave can never overpower the serial plot emperor in importance.

How about a more approachable comparison?
 

The serial plot is no different than a building with many rooms, all attached but with doors and walls that split them. The goal of a subplot is to provide resolution to the audience without ending the entire story, in the same way as we finish a checklist for our chores. The point of chores is to keep doing them every week so that your house sparkles, but each chore is different towards this endless journey. Each room is a different subject, but it's still part of the overall theme, the building, and they don't cause the building to get demolished. Jumping the shark is like knocking down walls to make more rooms, and usually people do it so destructively that they take the roof out and the whole thing caves in.

I know it’s taboo to compare writing a serial to doing chores, and I doubt people do chores anymore with how lazy we’ve all become with the roombas and the French maids, but this is meant to be a job and every job comes with a checklist. Remember that part when I said it’s important to please the audience? That’s a serious question, because I forgot if I said that. Oh well, let me say it directly then:
 

It’s important to please the audience.
 

The production of your serial should have the pleasure of your audience in mind. If you don’t have that in mind, then what the hell are you doing? Making sure people DON’T read your serial? Maybe you have the intention in mind, but you’re just not sure where their G spot is. G in this case means gratification. What other G spot is there?
 

To find this G spot, all you have to do is… well, feel around. What’s going on in the genre? What’s popular? Read the newspaper. Check the forums. Crunch the numbers.
 

That’s easier said than done, but serials are a result of familiarity. The production of your serial is meant to be the result of your consumption of tons of media, as well as enough social interaction in order to relate to your audience. Even something old like Alice in Wonderland was made as a serial with previous stories in mind, mostly around fables and fairy tales. Freaking Yu-Gi-Oh, a story about card games, had different episodes all because different duelers use different deck types.
 

Both of these stories are able to relate to kids. As much as I want to simplify this part and give an alchemical answer to it, the best I can say is “find your yin and yang by seeing what sticks, and use motifs to your advantage”. 

This requires another form of yin and yang: experience and attempts. You must experience other works to get a good idea and you must also attempt to see how you can reinterpret these ideas. However, this is not an excuse to deconstruct. Too many people try to reject a formula that works, or try to change up their own formula, and we see the results. Lack of dedication, lack of interest, jumping the shark. Boy howdy do we see jumping the shark.

I keep using that term but I feel that some people have heard it before but don't have a clear idea as to what it is. For anyone out of the loop, jumping the shark is a term that comes from Happy Days, where the cool guy, Fonz, wanted to be cool and jumped over a shark. The second he did that, everyone was aware that the show was dying and no longer popular, because such a stunt had to be performed for attention. This is why jumping the shark is used to describe an event in a story(usually serials) where a stunt is performed as an exhaustive attempt to retain attention.

Attention to an episodic show means money and this is why shows tend to be the victim of jumping the shark to retain income. I'll get more into income in the next section.

Now if you ask me, the serial version of this should be “alien intrusion” because this always happens in serials. Everything is going smoothly, the motifs are still there, we have the theme on point, and then aliens come in out of the blue when they were never there before. Yes, I’m talking about Indiana Jones again. And no, calling them interdimensional beings is not a way to avoid the aliens definition, because they are still aliens AS interdimensional beings.
 

Hell, even Z Nation made a nod to this phenomena by doing a fake out with their alien episode, which made me love it more. It’s as if they experienced a bunch of media or something in order to poke fun at things. But that’s besides the point.

Your goal is to never need to jump the shark by producing your story in a proper manner. You also have the benefit of not being a TV studio and writing something online for people to read. Well, assuming none of you fancy TV people are reading this. Your production should focus on saving yourself time and waste. And that’s where we get to the big question:

How to produce a serial with as little time and waste as possible?

Waste is when you are not progressing. If you’re struggling to write the story up, you’re thinking too hard. That, or you lack the familiarity required to be comfortable with the subject. No harm done if you are, because we all have that moment when we thought we could write something and then once the paper is in front of us, we are frozen in place.
 

You do this by making sure you and your audience are familiar with the subject matter, as well as the form of entertainment. This is done by using your own formula or someone else's in order to retain this familiar feel to how the story is told and what is within the story itself. There is zero reason to reinvent the wheel, and like a wheel, your serial will cycle in a circular motion to run the story back to the square one. This square one is your main theme, which you will then use and reuse for however many times you want. Different angles, different characters, different locations, different subplot, but same theme and same formula.
 

Familiarity is there for your audience to attach to the story and for you as the writer to conjure up ideas. These ideas, the subject matter, are to be attached to each other in a coherent way. If I’m going to have a spy-fi story about doomsday devices, I am going to make sure these devices are related, both as a result of doom and with whoever is opposing them or trying to use them. If I have a super hero, I’m going to make sure they are fighting super villains and not wasting their time cooking breakfast. These things all work together and build from each other, not against each other.

This kind of familiarity and subject matter combines to create motifs, both within and about the story. I’ve mentioned motifs before, but here I want to be really clear with what I mean. You save yourself time by sticking to motifs, and you save the audience their time by sticking to motifs. These are repeated themes that combine together to work together and create a clear voice and position that you are trying to make with your argument. The stronger the motifs, the more memorable your serial.

Factions, school houses, hero teams, villain teams, fancy weapons, super powers, even the types of episodes in a season; these will all follow a motif of a sort. A good motif to have is the 12 episode season for an arc, because it gives you the perfect number for producing enough episodes to get a 5-point story structure out and have 7 episodes left for things to happen in between. That, and 12 is the symbolic number of cycles, which relates to the endless repetition of both the year and a serial. 12 episodes, 12 months, it’s that simple.

Also, if you’re writing about a hero, you will have a hero’s journey in your story, meaning the 12 steps of the hero’s journey are present and able to be evenly distributed across these 12 episodes. For anyone unfamiliar, the 12 steps are:

1. The ordinary road
2. The call of adventure
3. Refusal of the call
4. Meeting the mentor
5. Crossing the first threshold
6. Tests, allies, enemies
7. Approach to the innermost cave
8. The ordeal
9. Reward
10.  The road back
11.  Resurrection
12.  Return with the elixir

Now, to make this more coherent for a serial, we could change some things around and say that 1 and 2 are combined, because these always happen in the first episode, but perhaps, we can then add “refusal of the return” before “the road back” in order to give an even split between the 3 acts with 4 steps each. And if you’re not making a hero’s journey, you can simply create 3 acts with 4 episodes anyway. A beginning, middle, end for each act and then 1 episode for extra stuff. 

You have to entertain, you have to switch it up, and you have to crank it out. This is something to consider even with filler. Yes, even the episode you’re using to buy time for a real episode needs to have little waste. And this is where the side quests of video games come in.

Games have had to adapt as time goes on and as games get longer, more content is demanded. The games that are about a world with worldbuilding are going to have many stories within the world, not just solely about the hero. These extra stories then get considered as actual subplots for the game to include, under the main plot. The closer to the main plot, the more impact it has on story development.
 

Remember, you have 4 different types of serials you can make, so not everything has to directly tie to the main story, BUT you’d be making a more fire serial if you do.

Your filler functions as one of these side quests. It needs to be part of the theme, needs to strengthen your argument, and needs to entertain your audience. The audience is there for whatever you’re doing as a form of entertainment, which is usually in the form of exploitation. When I say exploitation here, I mean there is a resource being used for your benefit AND I also mean that there is a trend or lurid content being used to grab someone’s attention. I’m not really sure of a serial that doesn’t have such a thing.
 

Usually, I will critique current postmodernist media as “nothing more than exploitation”, which is true, because what we have now is hyper-violence, sex, drug use, and pretty much anything disorderly that you can think of. A look into any serial now is a look into pure chaos. But that’s the entertainment of it all. What soap opera would function if there wasn’t any drama? What kind of adventure would we be having if there wasn’t any threat?

Sure, you can look at exploitation as a bad thing, but it’s only bad when it’s being used as a manipulation tactic in order to hide the terrible writing or argument within. Postmodernism is mostly about just having stuff happen with little thought as to why, and even then the exploitation is there in order to both hook and retain the audience. Game of Thrones, one of the most watched shows out there, is a postmodernist show that’s all about naked people killing each other. As much as I would like to remove mindless sex and gore from the media, we have to all admit that this sells to adults. Magic schools really sell to kids with things like Harry Potter.
 

You remove the waste in your filler and your plots by knowing why your audience is there in the first place. You came in with the question “do you like this concept?” with your pilot episode and now they are here wanting more of what that first episode had to offer. Granted, the first episode of a serial is never the highest point, but that is no excuse to make it weak. You’ll want your first episode to act as a first chapter, where everything the serial has to offer is presented front and center, for all to see and enjoy right off the bat. Starting weak or boring is never an option, because even if you plan to escalate things, the beginning needs to still be strong.
 

And not just strong, but also relatable. In the hero's journey, we have the ordinary world as the beginning of the adventure, before the journey into the unknown. People say it’s tiresome that most fantasy begins with the hero being a farmer, and that is kind of true. We don’t like that because we are not farmers anymore. Now every story begins with a high school student or some kind of current day profession.

You’d have to have brain worms to tell me that most Isekai stories don’t have some gamer as the protagonist. In fact, the entire genre of Isekai has it where a person from our world dies and goes into a fantasy world because of this familiarity demand. The audience needs to start from a common ground in order to get sucked into a world, or else they are trapped as some kind of outsider because there’s nothing to relate to. Filler episodes are a way to relate further and keep some things grounded, even if they are all about fan service. The fans are being served, and that’s a good thing.
 

Filler is always there to consider, but then there is also the type of episode structure you would be making. Most shows are 30min long, most serial stories are as big as a short story (between 1.5k and 7.5k words), and most levels in a game are also meant to be about 30min long. Recently, some of these have been extended, like serial stories being novelettes or even novels, as well as show episodes being as long as movies. No matter how long you want an installment, you'll have to make sure it's both consistent and of the formula you've established. I'm going to give some suggestions, but these are not the be-all end-all of writing a serial when it comes to format.

A lot of stories now are written as animes or in relation to tv shows. Many shows and anime have what is called the "A plot, B plot" structure, where one group or side of things is viewed, then it switches to another group or side of things. These are broken up by scene breaks or commercials. This is done to keep a mundane plot fresh, as well as a way to do the mixture of filler and real plot as I've mentioned previously. Earth stories have A and B plots of equal importance, while fire stories have the A plot as what the hero feels and the B plot as parts of what the world feels.
 

Let me explain.
 

Imagine I wrote a story about a superhero in a big city. My A plot would be about the hero and their journey, but then the B plot would be about the city or denizens who interact with the hero as other archetypes and personas that strengthen the hero's argument. Even if your serial is trying to be avant garde, I'm not sure how someone can escape the two sides of this coin. Even with a more earth serial, there tends to be the b plot of another group having a simultaneous adventure, and the only difference is that earth plots equalize the importance. To say it in another way:

Fire plots give importance to the A plot, with the B plot there as consumed support, like how wood(B plot) keeps a flame(A plot) burning.

Air plots have a direction given by the A plot, with the B plot there to help guide it, like how an arrow shaft (B plot) helps an arrowhead (A plot) travel through the air.
 

Water plots are layers of B plots that add to the A plot, like how droplets (B plots) add more to the pool (A plot).
 

Earth plots give equal importance to the two plots, like how ground is there to hold a rock and rock is there to hold ground.
 

As we dive down towards earth, we see more importance between these two plots, but the key thing to remember is that they're both present and acknowledged, even if someone wants to deconstruct them. Deconstruction of this aspect in the serial will cause the work to suffer, and your goal is to benefit from your serial, not suffer from it suffering.

Now, the last bit of production is about how many steps you want to plan ahead, just like any trip up or down a flight of stairs. It’s always an estimate, you eyeball it, and expect the next flight to be about the same. Imagine these flights of stairs as seasons and the steps as episodes. A season is a checkpoint you give yourself with a semi-ending. The goal is not really over, just the season’s plot, because this seasonal plot came to a resolution with the season’s mission completed. 
 

This completion is also looped back to point A, for the next season to begin and the new adventure to be taken on. At this point, you are giving yourself 3 layers of plots: 
 

1. Episode plot
2. Arc plot
3. Serial plot(main goal)

Let’s use an example to explain how this works. Perfect example: Star Wars. What happens in the first trilogy? Each movie had their own plot, the trilogy was about defeating the empire, and then the serial was all about the battle between the light side and the dark side. On top of that, each character had their own little goals and things that they wanted to do, which is why they were part of the plot in the first place. A lot of it revolved around filling the princess with midi-chlorian mcluncky, which, come on. Can you blame them?
 

But then something happened. It didn’t end at just the serials, did it? The stories expanded into other mediums, other characters, other adventures, other things. What happened? The serial capitalized on the possibilities.

Part 5 Possibilities

I’m going to be honest: worldbuilding is tough to respect. Not that it’s a terrible thing to focus on, just that it’s hard to find a plot when production is bogged down with worldbuilding. Then in some instances, we have worldbuilding that needs to be ret-conned or things break the world or the world is entirely contradictory from the beginning. Most of us can tell that the world building was going to be a problem the second someone posts about it on r/worldbuilding and talks about how they didn’t really have a story planned for it.

You know, the thing everyone says is important for a story because the story is literally the story?
 

However, after all of this woe, worldbuilding is one of, if not the most, important parts of a serial. You’re going to have multiple installments, so this world that the story takes place in must be both incredibly open to change and open to more factors than what is featured in the first installment. Just today, I was trying to read up on Berserk, since I only saw the anime, and I noticed that the story goes from “factions of animal-motif kingdoms fighting” to “there are cosmic forces destroying the very fabric of time and space”.

This drastic change in tone was actually still part of the story’s theme, due to little nods and hints about these macro entities being involved in some way. Nothing about it truly changed, it just expanded plot-wise. It’s still within the pleasant sword and sorcery genre, even though Guts gets an arm cannon. We have to admit, that’s a little more sorcery than sword at that point. But I think you know what I’m talking about with this expansion of themes and motifs that build from the previous themes and motifs to create a more intense atmosphere and epic scale.

Stories that increase in threat intensity and bring the stakes higher than ever are usually what we call a Power Fantasy, but that’s more of a criticism or insult instead of a proper definition. It’s also a problem for anime where the heroes progress in power for so long that they are unable to find enemies to combat with, because now they are able to shoot lasers through planets or whatever they are doing now in Dragon Ball Z. No matter how gradual a progression is, eventually a story will jump the shark like that if something doesn't hit a reset. 

But, let’s say something like that does happen, and your characters are too powerful to do anything entertaining. Let’s say the romance is settled. Let’s say you got bored of the series, as the writer, and decided to call it quits. What now?
 

Now is the time to expand on the possibilities with that cute little world you built. Worldbuilding, whether for a serial or a typical story, should be done from the top-down, if you want it to be coherent. Sure, there are ways to make it bottom-up, where you start with something small and then explain more things that are higher up in the aesthetic chain later. But bottom-up will always cause the writer to either hit a wall or jump the shark. To avoid all of that mess, you do it from the top-down.
 

Again, people can do it bottom-up. I’m not saying it's impossible. But the problem with bottom-up is that you end up exactly like the show Lost, where people only remember it for how convoluted and nonsensical it became after that polar bear thing or whatever was going on in that show. They were building the show’s story and world as they wrote it, and the result became a controversial mess. If you think you can do better than those people, by all means, go ahead and do your thing.

For the rest of the people who are actually sane, we will do it from top to bottom. We will do it through emanation. We do this by determining 3 easy corners of a triangle:
 

1. the main forces that be
2. the ultimate power
3. the main goal

You know what a triangle looks like, right? That thing where all the lines connect. These three lines are meant to be the paths and journeys that these 3 factors take, which we can call the 3 extremes. Makes it sound exciting, huh? That's because they are, due to the fact that these 3 extremes will determine the entire journey your audience will take as they enjoy your serial.

Speaking of 3s, you probably noticed a big motif about the number 3, and you probably noticed that there are 3 sets of three. Can you remember all of them? The first one was the prima materia of entertainment: exploitation, familiarity, and subject matter. I just talked about the last one: the extremes of main forces, ultimate power, and goal.

Can you guess what the 3rd one is?

It's journey, but not about our heroes or even our villains. It's actually a meta journey between the author, the audience, and the story world itself. When we write our serial, we are encountering our own journey, because we are not really planning to end our writing or reading streak. It's not like someone read a serial and planned for that to be their only read ever. Even people who try to only write one novel don't stop writing in general.
 

These meta journeys are not too important to dive into when you're just trying to write up a goofy story about mundane life events, but they are required to be acknowledged as factors in order to properly determine successful progression. The story world journey must progress and expand for a serial to reach full potential, and the audiences' journey must progress as well. We as authors must advance in order to get better. If a journey is stifled on either end, the serial suffers, especially when the author doesn't progress. Journeys are pleasurable when both sides are enjoying and having fun with the story world's journey.
 

The best way to make a journey pleasurable is to keep it in line with the 21 major arcana of the tarot.
 

Tarot is an amazing source of storytelling resources and self reflection that few try to use to their advantage. I've even been banned from a writing subreddit for simply mentioning the power within the major arcana when it comes to progressing a story. As much as I would love to explain the whole thing, I just want to mention a single card that will help you in deciding the story world's journey.

That card is the only one that can legally drink, number 21, the world. Aka the universe, the world card is depicted with a naked woman floating, surrounded by an ouroboros or wreath and with 4 creatures watching her. These 4 creatures are the ox, eagle, lion, and man. These 4 creatures, the Tetramorph, are a mixture of the 4 elements with something like living and now one lives.
 

Now wait a minute, didn't mention the 4 elements earlier? Why yes, I did! The 4 elements of how many types of serials there are will mirror the 4 ways you can diverge the world that you're building with your serial. The setting, the characters, the genre, and the themed goals.

In the world card, chaos is a focus. The woman is chaos, the ouroboros is a snake eating its own tail as a representation of chaos consuming itself for infinite through a cycle. Your story will focus on the chaos of cycle and repetition. But this doesn't mean you will be senseless. The woman is named Sophia, meaning something like Prudence or wisdom.

Feminine wisdom is required for the world to flourish, with the intention of cycling and repetition. Sophia was also tied to the holy wisdom of Jesus Christ, tying his wisdom to an equilibrium between the masculine and feminine, yin and yang, but also adding a sense of source to the idea of wisdom. The feminine is meant to represent something like a bearer, because women bear children and grow them in their wombs, just as the earth bears seeds to grow them into plants.
 

The idea of wisdom in this context is meant to be about judgment and knowledge in order to make better judgements. This is feminine because a lot of it is in relation to morals and emotions, due to things like intuition and prudence. Athena was the goddess of wisdom and strategy for a reason, because the feminine is the approach to even realize what the problem is to begin with. Intelligence is great to solve problems and wow people with trivia answers, but there's nothing about intelligence that allows us to determine why we should do something to begin with. Wisdom, Sophia, the world card, is there to say that you need the intention of completeness to guide you towards the proper goal path for your serial, to keep your story's journey healthy and strong.
 

This completeness is in relation to what you have to say, with your main theme as the main thing you want to say.
 

And what's better is that the story's journey doesn't have to end at only one serial. You're able to expand on the world through any medium that you can think of. Novelizations that summarize key moments, shows, comics, movies, video games, even music or podcasts like a radio serial. You can also remake the same story in different ways by changing ages, time periods, roles, tones, characters, plots, and anything else that can be a spinoff. All of these can expand or add to the story as things expand across the world instead of forward in a tired plot. 
 

This is key in order to revert the issue like requiring tensionless power in order to provide a challenge for an overpowered hero.
 

We have to admit, video games are really big now and the merging between movies and games is at an all time high. But now, we no longer have things that function as movie cutscenes. They are more like tv show cutscenes split between levels, or what is now called missions. I’m sure the gamers out there can recognize or think of a game where there is a set map, the game throws a bunch of missions at us, many of these missions have nothing to do with the main story, and even then the game isn’t over after the main story.

If you care to make a game in relation to your story, a serial is a perfect thing to use as a game premise because of how many games have been influenced by the serial format.

That kind of mentality is what puts serials above others. Installments of a serial is no different than the beats of a main quest with the addition of side quests for filler. At that point, all you have to do is think of if you want to put filler or not. Remember: less filler, more fire; but easier to burn up faster. More filler, more earth; but more mundane. And I don’t even know why people think mundane is a bad thing. Seinfeld is a show that praises itself on how mundane it is and people liked that show. There is a meaning to mastering the mundane when you want a more earth focused series.
 

Your goal is to keep making content so that the audience comes back, and because there are different kinds of audiences, you should aim to please as many intended fans as possible.
 

If you haven’t guessed it already, I’m talking about spin-offs, where a story that was about one thing is now about another, but it takes place in the same world or at least shares a character in some way. Marvel does this all the time with things like ultimate, noir, 2099, MAX, or any other retelling of their heroes. Ignore the self-destructive nonsense they are doing now with their woke agenda and view something like Marvel or DC as a pool of resources to take from and reshape everything established in it for more stories to come.
 

Sure, a lot of spin-offs fail, they aren’t as good as the original, or they try to rewrite the original in some strange way, but we can’t ignore something like the value of something like expanding into other mediums or changing things up to refresh an idea. If Star Wars didn’t expand, we’d never get Knights of the Old Republic. If Megami Tensei never expanded, we’d never get Persona. If Spiderman never expanded, we’d never get Japanese Spiderman where he has a mech and fights tokusatsu monsters.

Maybe that last one is a bit more obscure, but I think you get my point. Expanding your serials is the way to go, not just within one single storyline. Expanding the world and following other characters will keep a serial alive much longer and in a far greater way than jumping the shark and hoping for the best. From what we can gather with these examples, another massive benefit is the ability to reset the world. Constantly.

The key to a serial is something nobody wants to say more than once: repetition, repetition, repetition. Same stories, same characters, same events, same goal, same, same, same. The only things that change are tiny factors, like a mini-plot within a single episode or a tiny amount of progression. These tiny changes are no different than how we experience real life, which is what makes the serial so relatable. Naruto going out to fight another ninja is no different than us clocking in for work. It’s just another day at the office, just that his work days come with more explosions and ninja babes.
 

This relatability to clocking in and getting work done is also a great way to relate to what serials were meant for: the working class. Serials are popular for their comfort, not for their challenge. Even the most fire of serials is going to be comfortable in how someone can enjoy 4 or so hours of an anime for 12 episodes and enjoy a little journey into giant robots flying around or big titty high schoolers fighting zombies. These are experimental concepts that can either go on forever or bring up a myriad of themes along with a short story. These are stories that make up most of what modernism worked for and resulted in what postmodernism tries to destroy.

Or turn into a religion.
 

Serials are about capitalizing on storytelling, which is why it’s so profitable. If serials weren’t profitable, we wouldn’t be experiencing them at such high quantities with millions of dollars being put into them, unless we’re talking about Rings of Power. But even then, that was a spin-off of what was a much better origin with how Tolkien pretty much created the high fantasy genre that we know now. He did this by making a world that was so expansive that we’re able to easily turn it into video games and movies and add more to the world. The worldbuilding is important for a serial, but more in a way where the world must be built and rebuilt, over and over again, in an endless expansion or reconstruction.
 

It's fine to remake your serial for the better, or change things up with a spinoff. Nobody is out there going "I hate that they made the Arkham series for Batman!" because nobody in their right mind would care about that kind of spinoff. What we care about is when it's remade for the worst, or for the woke, which is the worst. Remember, your story is your argument, and if your argument is woke, you will go broke and your argument will be meaningless.
 

I didn't forget about the income aspect, so I'll cover that quickly before moving on. 
 

Income from a serial is meant to be active, instead of passive. As long as you retain production, you will retain income. This is the opposite of writing one thing and leaving it as that, which is passive. This active writing is seen as labor, because you're putting your time into turning the words you wrote into a means of production, which grants income. I am not going to accept the idea that this is done for free, or a labor of love, because nobody is going into serial writing to sell to nobody except people who absolutely don't care about connecting with other humans.

Your income will be brought by your influence and your appeal, which is determined by audience size and fascination. If you can take this audience and sell other things, like how soap operas sold soap, then that's awesome. I always say "it's not make money as a writer, it's make money and be a writer". Keeping the audience entertained will keep their attention, no matter how mundane, and the intensity of their support will determine how much money they will want to throw at you. I've said this before, people make cults over serials now, and I guess you gain cult status once fanfiction of your work is 99% shipping by the thousands.
 

Another factor of audience and income is accepting that different mediums need different focuses. Even if you turn your story into a game, you'd be switching around a lot of the focuses and adding more aspects to things previously established. Harry Potter books don't care much about spells or wizard cards, yet the video and tabletop games pull these into the forefront. Weaknesses on one end are to be strengths on another when you rebuild, and that goes for even rebuilding a series in the same medium, like how Ultimate Marvel did.
 

In the end, this rebuilding means nothing without purpose, which is the last step, and also the most important.

 

Part 6 Purpose

The writer’s journey comes to a close when the writing stops. Once there is nothing left to say is the only time a writer stops being a writer. But they will still have the title of writer under their belt, with a history of words laid out in the path they frolicked, like the dainty little deva they are. Serials are just one of the many ways to keep that journey going, especially if the destination is not so sparkly. Same goes for the audience, where their journey as an audience ends when the curtains fall for good.
 

Some people want this to keep going for as long as possible, others want to just release their work in parts because it’s easier. Both of these are valid, just different elements. The purpose comes in why you want to even have this journey to begin with. Having fun, making money, having fun while making money, proving your worth, whatever the case may be. The purpose is about connecting with the audience and positivity. You please them, they please you.

This is what people want to hear, and it is true. But I would say this kind of purpose or message is a bit incomplete. Something is missing that makes it feel more like an empty head pat than an actual supporting statement. So to finalize this sentiment, I will go over what I believe is the most mind blowing realization I’ve come upon in the last 24 hours.
 

The entire purpose of a serial is summarized symbolically in the Greek myth of Bellerophon. Remember, Greek myths were similar to serials themselves, split into tiny adventures where the heroes will deal with individual instances until their journey is over. They even had a couple of Avenger moments like when they had to join together to fight in the Trojan War or fight that stupid pig.
 

But Bellerophon on his own tells us of an existence that’s incredibly relatable to the serial writer. Check it out.
 

Bellerophon’s name to begin with is a title meaning something like “killer of darts” or “slayer of projectiles”. The serial is a story that shoots forward with no end in sight. He is the one who slays such projectiles, such serials. His grandfather was Sisyphus, a king who cheated death and was punished with an eternity of rolling a boulder up a hill to have it fall back down. Many people will see this as insignificant, but this symbolism is exactly what we have to aspire to live by as a serial writer.
 

Our origins, our inspirations that we homage in our work, is the result of tons of people living the absurdist life of Sisyphus. Rolling a boulder, typing of words, endlessly, to have people just forget about what was said or have them be ignored. The absurdist life of the struggling serial artist is no different than the absurdist life of the timeless one, for both of these people never found comfort in ending their journey, and their characters never had to end theirs.
 

But the similarities don’t stop there.
 

While Perseus was beheading Medusa, and Cadmus was crop dusting a dragon, Bellerophon was out fighting the Chimera. A terrible beast born from Typhon and Echidna. Both serpentine monsters, with Typhon born from Gaia and Tartarus(Earth and Abyss); and Echidna born from what is usually a primordial sea god or something related to death. What we can gather here is that the Chimera is the result of unrelenting chaos, especially when the parents are snakes and the snake represents chaos.
 

Remember back when I was talking about order and chaos, overarching vs separate. The chaos here is the separate, earth element, style of stories. Bellerophon slayed the shit out of that. Not only that, but the Chimera’s form is that of 3 animals combined: lion, goat, and snake.

The Chimera’s sibling is Cerberus, the 3 headed dog, which represents the three views that we hold across our lives: past, present, and future. 3 heads that are the same animal means 3 similar things that work together. But the Chimera was made of 3 animals that seem to really contradict each other. The predator, the prey, and the reptile that acts as both. If anything, these creatures represent something like the prima materia, the 3 edges that make up existence in a chaotic world. Lion relates to sun, which relates to sulfur; goat relates to earth, which relates to salt; and snake relates to the amorphous middle ground, which relates to mercury. 
 

Bellerophon slew this beast of chaos by flying over it with the help of Pegasus and shooting arrows at it, over and over again. This relates to how a serial writer can slay their own serial by doing the same thing, over and over again, until the thing dies. Now, we call that beating a dead horse, which is funny when we realize how Pegasus was involved in doing so. Pegasus, a flying horse, represented the endless freedom of creative thought. If the land animal could have wings, anything was possible with creativity.
 

With the help of creative thought, the serial writer is able to defeat a chaotic mess of contradictions with repetition.

Sounds incredibly simple, right? Kind of like a long winded way of saying “practice makes perfect”. This is a bit of a false premise, because it wasn’t the arrows that killed the beast. Instead, it was when Bellerophon threw a bunch of lead into its mouth, and the fire it was breathing melted the lead, which solidified in its stomach. People look at that and go “that’s a stupid way to end a battle.”

But the alchemist looks at that and goes “That’s genius!”

Lead is the most impure of metals. Think of it like absolute chaos and absolute earth in a metal form. This is why alchemists try to turn lead into gold, the most impure into the most pure. The lead killed the fire breathing creature. Remember, fire is a spiritual thing, and the chimera was a contradictory but complete creature. So this is another way of saying “impurity will kill the spirit of chaos”.

To the serial writer, this is another way of saying “a fire story is weak to improper handling, when story elements don’t fit and don’t belong”. You can repeat things of the same theme and nothing happens. But bring something that doesn’t fit into the serial, break the world, and you ruin the ability to properly “digest” the serial afterwards. This is the jumping of the shark, this is Disney Star Wars, this is Ring of Power, this is the nail in the serial coffin that kills the entire thing.

We haven’t even said how the story of Bellerophon ended yet! You see, his tragic demise is a warning. With the use of Pegasus, Bellerophon tried to join the gods up on Mount Olympus, and on his way there, he was struck down by Zeus and plummeted back down to earth. Then he landed on a thorn bush and went blind. Sounds like a dumb ending, but this is 100% relatable.
 

Creative thought brings hubris after success, we try to enter fame, the order of the world brings our downfall, and we become blinded with scorn. The joy of accomplishment comes with that slightly bitter feeling of “well I’m not going to be able to feel that again”. People are only happy with achievements if they are comfortable being mundane afterwards. The serial journey is meant to retain that constant feeling of accomplishment, yet as time goes on, the ability to do so is reduced after “slaying the chimera”. Once the Chimera, the chaotic beast of fire, is beaten, there is only blindness to follow, thanks to a plummet down to earth.

Once your coherent story of fire is over, serials become a history of earth, with stories being unrelated, because the fire story is over. These fire stories are the products of water(Echidna) and air(Typhon). Water is like a soap opera, always transitioning into another web of twists, and air is like most shonen anime with how filler episodes fill in the air between main story beats. Your fire story will be birthed from these two approaches, as a more honed and focused beast, that is still of chaos; but covers the beginning, middle, and end.
 

Bellerophon is a slayer, yes, but his ending is a warning in how serial writers ruin themselves with a dedication to end their journey one way, but result in an entirely different way. Whether you become a god or go blind, you still had the journey of a serial writer behind you, and you still were able to enjoy that time creating adventures for others to enjoy. The purpose of serial writing is to have your writing journey and make it the best journey possible. Also, never expect to become something like a god unless you are one.

Your status is not your choice or your opinion. It is granted by the worship of others, by the positive energy directed towards you from the audience. From other writers who used you as a form of inspiration. All those years of struggling as you lived like Sisyphus, rolling that boulder up a hill, writing those words on the keyboard, are all built on a fragile foundation. But fragile doesn’t mean to tread lightly or even fear the trek forward.

All you have to do is keep the truth in mind, that your serial is to be handled properly and that there is a proper way to handle it. Refrain from impurities. Keep things short if possible. Don’t go for earth stories unless you’re ready for the mundane. But even then, it’s rather hard for serials to be ignored.

Life itself is a serial. It’s the repetition of days, the cycle of seasons, and even the most pointless quests are part of the adventure. It is entirely relatable because it’s so familiar. Installments are brought to us in the same way it’s dinner time or bedtime. There’s that certain moment in our routine when it’s serial time. That moment when we can sit down, put our feet up, put a hand down our pants, and escape into another world.

And even when a serial is over, when the writer has ended their journey long ago, some of us are so grateful for that little escape that we are willing to return to the serial once more and have another go at it; adding more repetition in the series of repetition. It is an absolute lie that things have to be original or new, at all, especially when it comes to the serial. In fact, some of the most widely regarded serials are those that we have seen a million times, just brought into a different light or through a different point of view. If you’ve ever looked at a list of the most watched shows, you’ll notice that the top 5 consists of only 1 fantasy, Game of Thrones, and that fantasy is based on real life events from Medieval times. Plus it has a bunch of nudity, which helped.
 

There’s not much of a conclusion to this, other than bringing everything that was stated back together into a sort of “too long, didn’t read” kind of summary.
 

A serial consists of several parts:
 

1. The order and chaos of overarching story vs episodic story.
2. 4 elements of possible mixtures between chaos and order.
3. The 3 threes (entertainment, extremes, and meta journeys)
4. The serial acts as a cycle in relation to seasons of the year.
5. Seasons of a serial are 12 episodes that are 3 acts with 4 episodes each act.
6. The writer’s journey is the main factor out of all journeys.

That’s about it. I’m not sure what to add to serials other than being specific about what to write and a friendly “good luck”. I was trying to think about what exactly is there to do with serials these days, and from what I’ve gathered, people are really into stuff based on video games. This is a double edged sword, because video games are always focused on killing or fetching something, which really reduces the options on what a character is supposed to do. But thankfully, other things that people really like are things like magic schools and secret societies.

What people try to write are epic fantasies that are trying to be fire but are written as earth, and these are downright impossible to have interest other than blind curiously into the esoteric. I highly recommend for these to be avoided until after you've established your voice, because they are the hardest to market and the hardest things to get involved with. Instead, if you're going for an epic fantasy or space opera, go for earth. Go for the episodic format that lets the reader enjoy small stories in a vast world. You'll save yourself the headache and time.
 

Aliens are picking up speed, though, in the space opera kind of way, so maybe there’s something to look into the “space ship visits different planets” kind of thing. Usually these are of the harem type, where space babes are being plowed in the quest for strange, so perhaps that is an important factor that we're all ignoring. Isekai is another anime influenced genre that's being written a lot but read very little. People are blinded by the aspect of power fantasy and think they can gain traction with something that's unrelatable. But again, we have to really hone this point: the serial must be relatable to the audience, and the audience needs to feel comfort from the serial.
 

I’m also seeing a lot of failed stories about these things, mostly because they’re trying to appeal to what’s called new adult, and that’s a dying breed these days, in many ways. The college kid isn’t really something you’d want to put all of your chips on, because they are such a short lived moment and they grow out of the trend faster than they get drunk on a weekend. So, if anything, dedicate your time to actual adults, like the working class, and maybe teenagers if you are producing something in a place full of them. There is also a weird nostalgia trend going on now where people are writing about kids as protagonists but it’s directed at adults. We can thank Stranger Things for that trend, but I personally don’t really think it will last, since Stranger Things was about adults and kids, with nearly every copycat missing the point of including adults.
 

Maybe it’s going somewhere, like how South Park did, I don’t know. That’s something to consider. Other things to consider are broad subjects that you can easily play with and expand upon. Space travel, harems, zombies, supernatural creatures, conspiracy theories, ghosts, robots, kaiju, super heroes, pulp heroes like masked vigilantes, detectives, barbarians, martial arts. You can try to combine as many of these as possible and see what comes up. With that said, good luck!